Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry. I will address the Chair. Those of us in this Chamber want the Defence Forces to have the equipment, pay and conditions and protection required when they carry out humanitarian operations overseas as part of their laudable history of peacekeeping. It is when one starts interfering with the sovereignty and neutrality of the Irish State in the way outlined in the motion that we start to have a very serious problem. The Government is trying to push through a motion which is being presented as if it is one of the many European Defence Agency or other military motions. It is a case of there is nothing to see, move on. Deputy Crowe and I introduced a Topical Issue on the matter. Out of the blue, the Minister, Deputy Coveney, indicated to the European Union that the Government would sign up to PESCO. There was no expectation of that. It was out of sync.

I am not surprised because that is the agenda of Fine Gael. However, it came out of the blue at the time. We know of this agenda because it was apparent at the time of the first Lisbon treaty referendum. That was the first attempt by the two parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, to pull the wool over the eyes of the Irish electorate. When voters rejected it the parties cobbled together a triple lock. I was active during the debate on the two referendum campaigns and I argued that the triple lock was no more than an attempt to bamboozle the public, and that is what happened.

I believe the motion before the House is in direct violation of Article 29.4.9o of the Constitution. That provision holds that a Government cannot adopt any EU decision that would create a European common defence mechanism. I realise the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Minister for Defence are not present, but I am not complaining about the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach. The Minister for Defence is the Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, and people should remember that this falls fully on his table.

We are moving in the direction of a European common defence. Each step that has been taken in recent years has moved towards that end. One need only listen to the comments of EU Commission President, Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker. He made these remarks on 17 September, so I am not going back into history. He said that he foresees a fully-fledged defence union by 2025. I have before me the Commission infograph and I can give it to the Minister of State, Deputy Phelan, if he so wishes. The document suggests that a particular area might be a chief area by 2021. There is an agenda and the sequence is laid out nicely for us in the document as it is exactly where they want to go. That is another lesson that people can look at to see the intention of the European Union bureaucrats and their representatives.

I have no wish for the Defence Forces or our foreign policy to be in any way subservient to the EU or NATO, but that is what we are doing. I have no wish for Ireland to be a cog in an ever-increasing military structure or for our money to be diverted from the social fund into military research and development. We had that argument in the House not long ago.

Increasingly, we are going to become dependent on an EU military programme that will not be under our control. Part of the PESCO arrangement is that there will be oversight by others of our defence spend. Our independence and sovereignty is being undermined.

It is also intended that we would be involved in enforcing peace. One need only go back to the Lisbon treaty and the changes made at the time. We were told that was not something we would ever have to sign up for. Yet, that is exactly the type of mission PESCO and the battlegroups undertake. I am sorry - I gather I cannot use the term "battlegroups". It seems it was a bad title to give the arrangement. Apparently, it was a mistake and those involved should not have let the cat out of the bag in that way.

Deputy Chambers was present for some of the proceedings of the committee. It was not really a committee, rather it was a question-and-answer session with a Minister of State. We could not bring in any experts - I include the Minister of State in that cohort because he could not even answer half of the questions. Why now? What is the rush? Why do it at all? Such were the questions asked by virtually everyone, but the Minister of State did not give any proper answers.

The EU army may not necessarily be called the "EU Army" any more than the Irish Army is called the Army, because it is called the Defence Forces. Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker has said that if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then what else could it be? That is what it is. It is an EU army with a military structure and a headquarters.

Conveniently, the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces was touted as the person who would be in charge. He did not get the job but those responsible still put him forward for it. There is an EU military headquarters. What is that? It is an army headquarters. An army has soldiers and equipment and continuously increases its operations.

The problem with the operations and the people who are dictating all of this is that they are the same people who are former imperialists. Imperialist adventures are still afoot in Africa today. In whose interests is it to invade or force peace in different states in Africa? It is in the interests of the same people who are at the top of the agenda in terms of pushing PESCO.

The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, argued that people are mistaking the position on the 2% requirement and said that the only mention of 2% relates to research. I am sorry, but he is wrong. The 2% that we have discussed is the 2% level of spending that President Donald Trump told the NATO countries that they had to achieve, if not exceed. Even if we took it that we were increasing our military spend to the EU average, we would be increasing the military spend by the State threefold or fourfold. We should increase our spend, but we should do it when we can afford it and when we have addressed the other major social ills. We should do it to increase the pay and conditions of those in the Defence Forces first and foremost. Then, we should look at ensuring that they are properly protected and that they have the proper equipment. However, we should not do it at a time when there are people dying of the streets of Dublin and Cork.

What would it take to achieve the 2% level of spending sought by President Donald Trump and the NATO countries, the vast majority of whom control the agenda of PESCO? The relevant figure is €2.5 billion rather than the €500 million being spent at the moment. That might come under the Department of Defence Vote, as the Minister suggested yesterday. Everything in this House comes under one Vote or another. We are not arguing that point, but we maintain that someone else will be pulling the strings and setting the agenda for us and our military spend in future. I hope the Dáil will reject PESCO as an attack on our neutrality.

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